Delphix Express: rolling a VDB back

The following is an example of rolling a virtual database (VDB) back in time with Delphix Express, the free version of Delphix. Delphix by default keeps a 2 week window of changes for virtual databases (configurable to 2 months, 2 years etc). Thus we can go back in time to any point in that time window.

Why would we want to go back in time?

Maybe something went wrong. For example VDBs are typically used by developers who aren’t as versed in databases as a DBA. What happens when a developer accidentally drops a table yet there was other work in the database that they want to keep. In the industry, half the time, developer databases are not backed up because they are “just development databases.” With Delphix those developer databases are always backed up and we can go back in time in a few minutes, so if a developer accidentally drops a table or updates the wrong column we can recover in minutes.

A common example of going back in time is QA who runs destructive tests and wants to rollback to the state of data before the destructive tests. For example say QA copy of production has to be first masked, then has to add “corner case” data then the destructive tests are run and after running destructive tests, we want to get back to just after the “corner case” data was added. Delphix will allow you to do this in minutes with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Here is the video

In the video, the first thing we see is adding corner case data in the web UI for the QA person. The web UI for the QA person is accessed in the web browser via the target machines IP with “:1080″ added on to the end to signify the port, as in http://172.16.160.160:1080

It looks like

where we can added new employees in the bottom left. QA will add corner case data like “-1″, null, “deleted” etc. After adding the corner case data we can snapshot the data state. To take the snapshot, click the camera on the left hand side (underlined in red)

Now QA can run the destructive tests.

When QA is finished, then click on the “Rewind VDB” button in the bottom middle:

You’ll get a dialogue box asking you to confirm the rollback:

And that’s it. In a couple of minutes the VDB will be refreshed to the last bookmark.

Summary

It’s as easy as as clicking a camera icon to snapshot a point in time. You don’t even need to take the snapshot to go back in time, but without the snapshot you need to remember what point in time you want to go. With the snapshot in place all it takes is hitting “rewind VDB” to go back to the most recent snapshot. This is the admin interface. It’s even easier in the self service user interface Jet Stream.